Mucha 1

Julian Mucha
UWRT 1102-017
Professor Thomas
14 December 2015
Final Reflection
1

Choose a song or musical composition that communicates your experience with writing
and UWRT 1102. Consider including a video of the song. Explain your choice.

All throughout my experience with UWRT 1102, there has always been an emphasis on the
first draft acting as a starting point. The whole writing process revolved around putting your
thoughts onto paper and then further improving your ideas with successive drafts until you
are able to finally craft the final masterpiece. For this reason, I felt as if the most vital lesson
that I could take away from this course was that there was always time to improve upon your
first piece of work. A writer should never have to be discouraged after the first draft. Through
feedback and new ideas, a shy first draft can become a truly beautiful piece of literature. For
this reason, I have selected Fix You by Coldplay to act as the song that best communicates
my experience with UWRT 1102. Even through the moments that I believed that my first
draft would not live up to the expectations of my peers or of my professor, I understood that
the draft could always be improved to a more complete version of the ideas that I wished to
communicate to my audience.
2

If you were to teach this class, what ideas would you emphasis?

If I were to teach this course, I would greatly emphasize the idea that a piece of work can
always be improved in order to become the piece of work that a writer can compose. I would
also emphasize that writing is not a tedious labor but an exercise in developing minds where

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the ability to critically think and reflect flourish. It is also vital to emphasize that the writing
process is gradual and can take time. It is very important to not get frustrated and to simply
attempt to put your thoughts on paper. Another great idea to reinforce is that writing is not a
task that is accomplished in a short amount of time, but it is a process that requires a great
deal of thought in order to properly craft a piece of work.
3

Explain how your understanding of rhetorical knowledge has changed over the course of
the semester using at least three examples from your writing (ex. Did you shift an
assignment to better fit a particular genre like a proposal?).

Over the duration of this course, I have had to properly adjust my understanding of rhetorical
knowledge in order to better react to my audience and to the assignment. For example, in my
inquiry project I had to review my audience and better reevaluate where I was going to take
my inquiry as a whole. I attempted to make my inquiry paper more relatable to my peers by
referencing experiences that they may have remembered. Learning to appeal to the audience
of my work is very important in making the points of the work relatable to the audience in
order to better engage them and allow them to maybe receive my ideas with a more open
mind. I also sought to understand the audience and potential views that they might hold in
order to bring up arguments that someone might have and then provide a counterargument in
order to add more integrity to the point that I wished to convey.
4

Explain how your critical reading has improved during the semester. (Ex. In what ways
did you read across texts for connections and patterns in your inquiry?)

Critical reading played a vital role in my growth as a writer over the course of the semester.
Most notably it played a significant role in allowing me to search through vast amounts of
text to extract information that was of a great importance to pushing my ideas present in my

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thesis. By reading critically, I was able to quickly sift through the information present to
locate facts and ideas that would best support my own. Although it required a great deal of
time to locate acceptable sources to place in my thesis, the ability to read critically allowed
me to properly utilize legitimate and credible sources.
5

Discuss your composing processes. Ex. Did you conduct additional research while
revising or after consulting a colleague? Provide at least three examples to support your
assertion.

The composing process requires a great deal of time to be invested in it in order to properly
devise a paper of a high quality. After receiving a great deal of constructive feedback from
my peers, I decided that further research would be of a vital importance to the development
of my thesis. By utilizing even more facts and credible sources, I believe that the quality and
credibility of my paper improved greatly as a result. Although more time had to be added to
the composition process, I believe that it was well worth it in order to construct a higher
quality paper. I spent a great deal of time locating sources and rereading my statements to
best craft a piece of work deserving of a reading. The composing process also included the
various times when I had to revise my paper to create a final draft to turn in and the multiple
peer conferences. Each of these allowed me to compose my piece properly.
6

Provide at least three examples of your knowledge of conventions (ex. sentence level
changes, MLA citations).

My knowledge of conventions have been supplemented by my experiences in this course. For

example, MLA citations which were required throughout the semester when turning in
documents, was vital. I learned a great deal about how to utilize parenthetical citations. When
citing a source, it is required to insert a parenthetical citation at the conclusion of the

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sentence. Also through our reading in They Say, I Say I learned you should not use run-on
sentences and how to properly insert commas in a sentence. Conventions are also important
for the fact that a proper use of conventions in a sentence allows the reader to properly
understand what the writer wishes to convey. A poor use of conventions can alter the
meaning of the words which can maim the intended point that the author wishes to show.
7

Critical Reflection: a) Discuss an example of choices made during a composition. b)

Explain what you think is most important in providing commentary on others work and
receiving commentary on your own. Provide at least three examples of your nuanced use
of commentary in your writing projects.

One example of a choice I made during composition includes the times when I was a part of
the peer conferences. After receiving the feedback from the peer conferences I had to decide
whether or not I was going to adhere to the advice that was provided for me. I felt as if the
constructive criticism that I had received was beneficial to allowing my paper to be the best it
could be. I chose to listen to some of the feedback which included focusing more on
specialized education in the United States and to use more facts to drive my point home. The
most important part of reviewing a peers work is to realize that what you believe would
make a paper better may not be consistent with where the author wants to take the piece. You
need to be mindful of the fact that the authors opinions may differ greatly and to take a
moment to look at the paper through their eyes and realize that it is not wise to rip a paper to
shreds in terms of corrections. It is far more effective to make some suggestions on the paper
based on where the paper seems to be going. When it comes to receiving commentary on a
draft, it is important to take any criticism with grace and to completely listen to the thoughts
presented to you. Reacting negatively to commentary may turn someone off from providing

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further pieces of advice for your work. In several instances for example, I was given some
advice that I may have disagreed with, but I decided to hear the entire commentary. During
the peer conference for the thesis draft, I found that a vast majority of the suggestions made
found their way into the final draft of my thesis. During the peer conference for the annotated
bibliographies, a suggestion was made that I insert a description of the author of my articles
present in my writing to add more credibility to them and to my piece. Overall, I must say
that the peer conferences contributed tremendously to my development as a writer and my
ability to listen to feedback in order to better improve my writing as a whole.